A Moravian Candle Box

[David Keller NC]

Thought I'd post this to potentially encourage someone else to make one. It's based on an origianal in the collection of Old Salem, probably made late in the 18th century. The dimensions were graciously provided to me by Dan O'Sullivan of Durham, NC, who has built dozens.

The salient dimnsions here are 14-3/4" long, 8-3/4" wide, by 3-1/2" deep (that's outside measurements). The sides are 1/2" thick, the top is 3/8" thick, and the bottom is 1/4" thick. The woods in this example are curly maple from Irion Lumber Co, Birds-eye maple from a local woodworking store, and eastern white pine as the bottom. The finish is French Polish.

A couple of construction comments: The end grip of the top is, of course, long-grain attached to face grain. So it is attached with 5 tiny #2 brass screws from underneath the lid, with the 2 outside screws on each side having oblong holes in the underside of the lid to accomodate wood movement. The close-up of the dovetails is one way to accomodate the grooves for the lid and the bottom - one simply cuts the bottom and top tail short, and reduces the depth of the mating pins to match. Easy to do with handtools, not so easy to do with power tools.

There is one significant mistake I made with this box - the upper corners should be mitered, not a tail/pin combo (that's what happens when you get a too busy laying out the pins and tails!). The next couple will correct that issue.

And, as one might imagine, this one was done totally with hand tools - no tailed assistants. The tools used were the usual layout items (square, marking knife, 14 degree dovetail saddle square), a wooden plow plane to cut the grooves for the top and bottom, a wooden panel raising plane to cut the top and bottom bevels, a dovetail saw, a carcass saw, and a foreplane, a jointer and a smoother.

[Ed Sallee]

Very Nice, David.....

I've often stressed about combining Bird's Eye & Curly maple.... wondering if it would look good.... You've answered that question for me.... It looks great!

Again.... very nice! Let me get out of this "reply box" so I can get back to lookin' at it..... :D

[David Keller NC]

Ed - One thing I'd say about Bird's Eye, particularly mixed with curly, is that in my opinion it does not take colorants well. You can certainly tint the clear finish if you use it as a toner (with a coat of untinted clear finish between the wood and the toner coat), but just about anything else in my experience turns into a muddy mess.

This one has about 20 thin coats of 2 lb. cut shellac brushed out with a Cotman's artist watercolor brush on it (highly recommended for shellac, by the way - and reasonably cheap), settled down and polished out by rough sanding with 400 grit aluminum oxide stearated sandpaper, then 600 grit, then french-polished with the traditional linen over lambswool rubber (yeah, I know, that's not genuine French Polishing, but hey, this was a practice box and I needed a shortcut!).

[Ed Sallee]

Sounds like a good finishing schedule.... Again, I really like the box.....

You mentioned French Polishing.... I've never tried it myself.... but I intend to one of these days.

Now would be a good time to share this link for the how to's on French Polishing...
(http://www.milburnguitars.com/fpbannerframes.html)
One of these days..... or two... I'll give it a whirl....

[John Thompson]

Beautiful box, David. I do like the maple-maple combo together and the clear finish is the ticket to buy on maple as far as I am concerned.

Well done...

[Joe Cunningham]

Excellent! That panel is very crisp, something I must admit to struggling with using my method--usually cut the fielded outline of the panel with a backsaw, then rabbet the panel with a plane and finally raise the edges by angling the plane down to some gauge lines.

What panel raising plane did you use?

I think I just may have found a Christmas gift build idea...

[gary Zimmel]

Beautiful job on the box David.

Even better it was done all by hand!

[John Keeton]

Great job, David. Now I have a use for some of my curly maple scraps!

I think I agree on the mitered corners, but what would you suggest on the handle end of the top? Would you let the sides extend such that from the side, both front and back show long grain? Or, would you miter the handle to match the back upper corner? Seems that choice may leave a fragile corner edge on the handle.

[Brad Wood]

very nice looking box

[David Keller NC]

"What panel raising plane did you use?

I think I just may have found a Christmas gift build idea... "

The panel raising plane I used on this box was one made by John Bell in Philadelphia some 150 years ago. Often, these old planes will need tuning - typically flattening the sole, working the wedge and blade mortise with a float (the bodies shrink but the iron doesn't, leaving it too tight to adjus easily).

If that's not your thing, I might suggest one made by Clark and Williams. I had one of these that I sold because I preferred to keep my antiques and there were too many laying around the shop. The C&W had some advantages over the antiques, though - the iron was pitched at 50 degrees instead of the more usual 45, and the mouth was very tight - perhaps 10 thousandths or a bit less, so tearing out figured wood wasn't as much of a problem. C&W typically has a backlog, but it's a lot less for bench planes than it is for molding planes, though you may want to order it by August if it needs to arrive for certain by Christmas.

Anyway, there are a couple of other alternatives that might work a bit better and be a bit easier than a backsaw. In particular, the skew rabbet block planes made by Lie-Nielsen work exceptionally well as panel raisers. I've slightly modified mine by adding a longer wooden fence to the supplied brass one, and I've made a little wooden fence with embedded magnets to stick on to the supplied panel-raising fence so there's more bearing surface on the top of the field - the supplied fence can mark up the field of a soft panel, like EWP.

I also understand the Lee Valley skew rabbets can be converted to a panel raiser by similarly adding a wooden fence.

[Mark Valsi]

DAVID,

I really like that box !!! The combination of the woods is exquisite, and you have the proportions just perfect. I love how the top has a bit of a relief to it, really adds visual appeal. Finish is great !

and the Dovetails. . . . . Those small DT's are great, well done, and spaced very well as to the aesthetics of the join.

All in all this box is fantastic; "A+" for sure.

[David Keller NC]

Great job, David. Now I have a use for some of my curly maple scraps!

That was indeed part of the purpose of making this - the curly from irion was too nice to go into the woodstove next winter. However, the top was another matter - I didn't have a 9" wide, 2 foot long scrap to cut down to make the lid, and this was a practice box anyway, so that's the reason for the bird's eye - that I had left over from another project.


I think I agree on the mitered corners, but what would you suggest on the handle end of the top? Would you let the sides extend such that from the side, both front and back show long grain? Or, would you miter the handle to match the back upper corner? Seems that choice may leave a fragile corner edge on the handle.

The box that I copied this one from, made by Dan O'Sullivan, had exactly that arrangement for the handle on the end - all 4 corners were mitered, and the handle applied to the top was actually set up so that the top was let into a groove in the handle, and screwed from below. That, by the way, was the second mistake I made when setting this up - I cut the sides and the groove in the sides so that the top edge of the front end was flush with bottom of the side grooves - that's why there's a small gap on the front corners underneath the handles. By cutting a handle that has a groove from the top, you make one that appears to not have any opening - that's the way the original in Old Salem's collection was done.

Interestingly (perhaps) the original in Old Salem's collection had the bottom set into rabbets in the sides, and nailed in. Over the last 230 years, expansion/contraction in that bottom has loosened the dovetails on the 4 corners. Also, the handle was nailed onto the top. I like authenticity, but finding tiny cut nails like that proved nearly impossible, and I'm not quite at the point where I can make them myself (but working on it).

My guess is that the box would be used lightly enough that the mitered corners on the top would survive quite a long time, though I don't have a picture of the original to verify that (the description of the original was from Dan's notes).

[David Keller NC]

Hmm - Thinking about and describing the errors I made with this box is prompting me to go down to the shop and make another. I'll post it when done (hopefully more "correct" this time!)

[Dan O'Sullivan]

Hey David
Just to add a couple clarification shots of the miter idea. This is the same box in walnut with the miters illustrated. Certainly not as bold as the curly but the build idea seems clear enough. The miters on all 4 corners hides the lid opening a little more.

dan

[Carl L Goff]

David K.
I like your candle box and choice of wood. I made one out of walnut and started to make one out of curly maple also. the one that I made is half the width of yours, but the same lenght and heigth

[glenn bradley]

That is striking. Great combo on the woods and the interesting appearance caused by the dovetail side/top/bottom profile is very cool.

[David Keller NC]

Dan - I've since made one of these out of mahogany that corrected the missing mitered-corner detail. I shot a lot of pictures of the build process with hand tools and was thinking of posting it, but having to edit/re-size and caption some 50 pictures has been a bit of a deterrent. :)

[Van Huskey]

Gorgeous! I have one on my to do list but it keeps getting pushed down.

[george wilson]

Great looking boxes!! Keep posting those pictures,guys.